Bullshit. People that think this are the entire reason so many people quit playing on this server/project.

Stop changing classic EverQuest. Stop creating threads to lobby for changes that YOU want. Stop trying to alter rules because they don't cater to YOU. Stop saying poop-socking is gay and acknowledging rules to avoid it when, if this were a classic EQ server with known spawn times, poopsocking WOULD be occuring until the PLAYERS decided to do things differently. Stop all the bullshit.

People want to play classic EverQuest, and they spend 59 levels enjoying the recreation that the devs and community members that post in the bugs section have worked so HARD to attempt to recreate, only to achieve the 60th level, begin raiding and see that it is NOT CLASSIC.

Some keep playing and come here to lobby and try to change the game to better suit them, while a good majority just get sick of it, realize it's not the game that they played 14 years ago and quit, often bemoaning the fact that it's not classic.

The thing that keeps ruining it for all of those players are those who have NO INTEREST in raiding classic EQ because it's not "fun" and doesn't benefit them personally.

Addressing the issues of a non-classic playerbase by changing core game mechanics everyone came here to relive is wrong.

You couldn't have read half of the posts I've written here (and I don't blame you, it's a lot of read) and still state this.

You don't know me, my characters, or what guild(s) I'm in. Let's just say I have had or still have several level 60 characters, many exceptionally well equipped, and that I am or have been in the top guilds on the server (including TMO).

Your post simply states that you've implied that I'm not getting enough loot and therefore I want change. What you're not following is a two-fold experience of mine: First-fold: Not playing the game to play the game is not fun. I don't care who you are, it's not fun. Second-fold: I want to see everyone have opportunity, NOT just me and mine.

You're talking about keeping things classic, but they already are the farthest thing from! We have FTE rules that did NOT exist in classic! They've NEVER existed and still do not today! We have arbitrary rules that the server maintainers had to create, and let me be SO VERY CLEAR on this point: JUST TO PREVENT ALL THE ARGUING, TRAINING OF ONE ANOTHER, POTENTIAL KILL STEALING ATTEMPTS, AND OTHER NEFARIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM GUILD TO GUILD JUST TO MAKE RAIDING EVEN VIABLE ON THIS SERVER.

THAT'S how bad things are! I can't believe there are some out there that have not reached that conclusion. Think about that for a minute. We actually have ARTIFICIAL RULES to make sure that raiding isn't SO BULLCRAP right now as to make it completely ridiculous!

How would you handle most of the raid content in this game if not for imposing rules? Have you seen a VS spawn lately? When 5 guilds show up and your 40 people kill him but the group of 4 get the kill, should they get the loot? Then the game becomes a fight of, (do we engage or not? Because someone else might kill steal it.) So what do you do? Just "let everything work itself out?"

What about the original rules imposed in classic EQ? Do they have any place? What about training and kill stealing? What about multiple character boxing? Where do you draw the line? Where do you not?

You can NOT have an Everquest server without rules that would not destroy itself in a relatively short time. You just can't. Nobody will raid when every single fight it's just random luck as to which group of DPS gets the physical kill and loots. If not for the rules, people would train you just to take your Fungi King camp, or hell, JUST FOR FUN!

Most people won't individually, but once you get to the guild level they sure as hell will. You're explicitly nieve if you believe that not to be the case. I've seen with my own eyes situations in guilds ranging from TMO to FE to BDA where a member of each guild has--at their own will--specifically made a training attempt on another guild just to hope to garner a given raid kill. This has been in each case, AGAINST the will of the guild of which they were apart! Once you get people into that group mentality, their desires, goals, and willpower completely shift. Good people start to make poor choices.

Let me be clear about one absolute fact: This server MUST have rules and MUST be policed. Period.

THIS is why I propagate better rules. THIS is why I discuss (not demand, not berate, not even assume they're the best ideas) the current rule and raid structures out there.

I know it's hard to believe that there are some hardcore players out there who actually want what's best for everyone and who want to see more selflessness out there--I really know it's so hard to grasp--but it's true none the less.

I have a bunch of characters, so I can sock and play, but not everyone CAN.

I also have tons of super valuable items, some of the most valuable in the game to date, but not everyone has even a tiny opportunity at them, and that's not always because they don't play hard, put in the time or energy, or because they don't deserve it!

I'm all for time and energy equates to success. I've been a martial artist for years in the real world. I practice two branches of the traditional Chinese Shaolin martial arts. The Chinese have a saying about Kung Fu. They say that everything is Kung Fu. Kung Fu roughly translates to time and energy. I train for hours a day for years to hone my body, my mind, and my experiences to the Shaolin arts. The monks of old trained from sunrise to sunset, rigorously in ways we in the West could not even imagine. Believe me when I say that these concepts are NOT lost on me.

But what we're doing on this server is taking some people who DO devote the time and energy, and we're ostracizing them because we see them as inferior to us and not worthy of even the opportunities because we've taken them all for ourselves.

These elitist attitudes of digital uberness must stop. It is always better to be the better person. To be honest, forgiving, empathetic, sympathetic, and selfless.

These things are virtues of goodness, and I cannot imagine a reason not nefarious as to why anyone would object to this kind of ideology.

I love you

If you've been around and have geared characters like you say you have, then you'd already know why TMO isn't going to give any ground on free raid mobs for other guilds. You'd know you were wasting your breath trying to convince any of them in power of that as well.

You're either a liar or delusional, possibly both.

It isn't even so much that TMO is so elitist that they won't share. It's that they don't trust the other guilds to share either.

I know that there are many in TMO who would give up content time and again to other guilds striving for things. The thing is, how do they dictate to that guild that they can have this opportunity when there's always another looking-to-be-the-most-uber guild out there who hates their competition so VIVIDLY that they will disregard anything TMO or any other guild prospectively chose just to get that next kill?

The race has become so fervent in peoples minds that they've disregarded any prospects of sharing, because nobody trusts anybody else.

Making change will either take one or two things: It will either take, low and behold, ALL of the major raid guilds to stop fighting and hating each other so much that they can work things out as a single community team, OR, server GM rule intervention.

I would prefer the server just find good reasonable ways to share with each other, I really would. There's just so much distaste for others here that it's become such a trial.

Hell, we can't even have an open-ended discussion about it without several dozen posts basically all saying: You're a dick. I disagree because you're an idiot. "You suck". "I'm leet you're newb stfu!", and the like.

I mean come on, I can't even make a genuine reply about doing the right thing without being called a delusional liar. Is that how far we as a community have fallen?

I've read every post in this thread including yours. I don't care whether your angle is "you want more loot" or "you want better rules" the point is you are out for SOMETHING and therefor biased.

The rules on a classic EverQuest server should be classic, and if that drives away the players because they aren't having fun then so be it. For some reason the devs seem to have made a decision to make things fun and engaging for players as opposed to accurate. They're walking a line and attempting to balance the two, and what we get is a bastardized version of both.

A classic EverQuest server with 300 players on it is better than a non-classic EverQuest server with 1500.

Plus, I don't exactly subscribe to the notion that people would stop playing because poopsocking isn't fun. Most of this thread and this server seems to be people that explicitly don't raid because variance isn't fun and they don't want to track things 24/7.

Using classic rulesets and mechanics, how could things POSSIBLY get worse when 95% of the people who could compete for mobs chose not to because of artificial systems put in place? At least those 95% would have as equal a shot at a FTE or KS as the 5% that do raid currently. Everyone would spend a hell of a lot less time tracking too.

Most importantly though, it would be classic.

What's so wrong about that?

This is not true.

I think the main problem is when there's 150-200 raiders in one guild, 80 in the next and so on so forth. It stops competition, barely lets new guilds start up that have their eyes on raiding. The server is more or less a low-pop server and the only guilds who can really compete are the longest standing ones. Just doesn't give new guilds much of a chance to get into the raiding scene, especially with the more casual raiders. Now TMO / whatever other guild is 2nd now may have "jobs" and "lives" but they also have upwards of 100 raiders, so you can easily drop the 30-40 people who may have real life complications out and still have an effective zerg force which is what higher end raiding has become. No skill, no fun just going into a raid with an overwhelming force and dropping the target in a few seconds. That's not competition, competition is suppose to be something hard not a cake walk.

I mean no offense to TMO, but quite frankly you all are the biggest guild of dbags here and easy to use as examples. But you're all for the most part, posers because you're all followers and not leaders. Guild splits were common in classic for more competition/change of playstyle. The dirty flame war talking is getting a bit old, show your shit and split into more than one guild and find out how good you really are.